Fueled by desperation and a chance alliance with an aristocratic widow, a British slave girl battles to win her freedom as a gladiator in Nero's Rome; but first she'll have to overcome a deadly rival, a bloodthirsty, freeborn fighter who has sworn to destroy her.

SYNOPSIS:

You’re a teen-aged orphan in a strange land, enslaved by a greedy pimp who's willing to trade your life for a flagon of wine. How do you escape your nightmare existence? If you’re the daughter of a Celtic warrior princess and renowned fighter, you seek deliverance in the arena, on the bloody sand, where a gladiator can win her freedom or die trying.

Imagine if the women of ‘Bridgerton' were suddenly transported back to the world of ‘Gladiator'. Would they thrive? Would they even survive? Adapted from the graphic novel by Ron & Justine Fontes, authors of hundreds of children’s books, WOODEN SWORD follows Ursa, a Celtic slave, and her allies - a crafty prostitute, an iconoclastic blue-blood widow, and a naive young Vestal Virgin in training, as they dream, scheme, love and fight, using their brains and unique talents to navigate the perilous man’s world that was Nero’s Rome.